View source for Manhin Look-Yat

{{Infobox scientist
| name = Manhin Look-Yat
| image = Manhin Look-Yat 1956.jpg
| alt = Manhin Look-Yat
| birth_date = {{birth date|1925|08|06|mf=y}}
| birth_place = Trinidad and Tobago
| death_date = {{death date|1996|07|01|mf=y}}
| residence = Beltsville, Maryland, United States
| nationality = Trinidadian
| known_for = [[Astrophysics]], [[Astronomy]], "True Planetary Motions and Rhythmic Climatic Changes"
}}

'''Manhin Look-Yat''' (August 6, 1925 &ndash; July 1, 1996) was a Trinidadian-born amateur [[Astronomy|astronomer]] and independent researcher who developed an unconventional theory of planetary motion which he called "True Planetary Motions and Rhythmic Climatic Changes." Working largely outside mainstream academia, he argued that the [[Sun]] moves in an orbit of its own around the hub of the galaxy and that projecting planetary orbits from a moving Sun, rather than a stationary one, reveals predictable long-term cycles of climatic change. His manuscript was left unpublished at his death and was completed and published posthumously in 2010 by his daughter, Helen Look-Yat Taylor.

==Biography==

Look-Yat was born in [[Trinidad and Tobago]] in 1925, the son of a Trinidadian mother and an immigrant Scottish merchant father. As a child he took a wide-ranging interest in the natural world, from geology, anthropology and physics to astronomy and cosmology. Rather than pursuing a traditional university education, he was largely self-taught, and by his mid-twenties he had begun compiling a series of journals on the sciences, taking a particular interest in theories of planetary motion. Accounts of his life compare his self-directed scholarship to that of the nineteenth-century self-taught Scottish scientist [[James Croll]].

Look-Yat later settled in the United States, residing in Beltsville, Maryland. From the mid-1970s until his death he worked to document his theory, typing his manuscript himself even as the progressive effects of [[Parkinson's disease]] increasingly limited him. According to his family, he died in July 1996, before completing the publication of his work.

==Work==

Look-Yat's central claim was that earlier astronomers, including [[Galileo Galilei|Galileo]] and [[Johannes Kepler|Kepler]], had modeled planetary orbits with reference to a stationary Sun, and that this assumption produced what he regarded as deficiencies in describing planetary motion. In his framework, the Sun itself follows a cyclical orbit around the inner hub of the galaxy, and planetary orbits should be projected from the center of the ellipse of this moving Sun.

He held that these "true planetary motions" corresponded to regular, predictable cycles of climatic change, which he described in periods on the order of 6,000, 12,000 and 25,000 years. On this basis he asserted that long-term climate shifts, including ice ages, could be forecast far into the future. These ideas are not accepted within mainstream astronomy or climate science and stand outside the established models of celestial mechanics and [[Milankovitch cycles|orbital forcing]].

Look-Yat left volumes of notes, drawings and audio recordings of his projections. After his death these materials passed to his daughter, Helen Look-Yat Taylor, who transcribed the manuscript and audio tapes and, beginning in 2009, prepared the work for publication. The completed book, ''True Planetary Motions and Rhythmic Climatic Changes'', credited to both Manhin Look-Yat and Helen Look-Yat Taylor, was published by Xlibris in 2010.

==Abstracts==

* 2010 - "[[True Planetary Motions and Rhythmic Climatic Changes]]" ([http://www.naturalphilosophy.org/pdf/abstracts/abstracts_5753.pdf Read in full])

==Books==

* 2010 - "[[True Planetary Motions and Rhythmic Climatic Changes]]" ([http://www2.xlibris.com/Bookstore/bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=86175 Read in full])

==External links==

* [https://www.amazon.com/Planetary-Motions-Rhythmic-Climatic-Changes-ebook/dp/B079K5H24L ''True Planetary Motions and Rhythmic Climatic Changes'' on Amazon]
* [https://books.google.com/books/about/True_Planetary_Motions_and_Rhythmic_Clim.html?id=0zeH4mWPUzYC ''True Planetary Motions and Rhythmic Climatic Changes''] at Google Books
* [https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/discovery-of-the-century-true-planetary-motions-and-rhythmic-climatic-changes-112545139.html "Discovery of the Century: True Planetary Motions and Rhythmic Climatic Changes"] (PR Newswire, 2010)

[[Category:Scientist|Look-Yat Manhin]]
[[Category:Worldwide List of Dissident Scientists]]

[[Category:Astronomy]]